


The Knight of the Laughing Tree

by ghostbythesea



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arthur Dayne Lives, BAMF Lyanna Stark, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Jon Snow is Azor Ahai, Jon Snow is Not Called Aegon, Lyanna Stark Lives, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, POV Lyanna Stark, R Plus L Equals J
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:28:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25666708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostbythesea/pseuds/ghostbythesea
Summary: Whatever it took, Lyanna would protect her son.
Relationships: Arthur Dayne & Ned Stark, Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark, Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen, Robert Baratheon/Lyanna Stark, Satin Flowers/Jon Snow
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter One

_ “Promise me, Ned, promise me.” _

_ “Yes,” her brother choked out, “I will.” _

  
Lyanna had faded into sleep, then. A restless sleep, feverish and uncomfortable, as she danced between the waking world and the realm of the dead. She could hear her son crying, sometimes, the babe who her husband had desperately wanted to be a daughter, and she could hear her brother’s hushed words, too, broken pleads she couldn’t quite decipher.

When she woke on the seventh day after the birth of her son, it was sweaty and uncomfortable, her legs cleaned of her blood and her beloved child in the cradle beside a bed she didn’t recognize. Sunlight streamed through the window of the bedroom, pleasantly warm but too bright on her face, and a hand was wrapped tightly around hers.

“I’m sorry, Lyanna,” apologized a voice she’d never wanted to hear again, “for what he‘d done to you. I couldn’t, Gods—“

In that moment, she wished that she’d died in the tower, knew that she should’ve, really. She never should’ve made it out, should’ve been with Rhaegar, her beloved, wherever he was. In that moment, she resented her brother for whatever he had done, for she was certain that he’d both saved her life and ruined it forever.

“The babe,” she choked out, leaning over to look at her son.

“Ned explained everything to me,” Robert promised. His stormy blue eyes were wet with unshed tears, his face flushed like he’d been crying. He was handsome, sure, but there was no kindness in his face, not like in Rhaegar’s. “What he did to you, it was abhorrent, but your son— he’ll be spared, you have my word. I swear it to you, Lyanna, your son will live.”

Spared, as if it wasn’t the standard for infants to be pardoned for their father’s supposed crimes.

It was the one mercy that fate had given her.

“But you won’t suffer any longer,” Robert continued gently, clasping her hand tighter in his. She wanted to rip it away from him, but she didn’t have the strength to, and couldn’t imagine the wrath that could follow. Her son was still in danger, so long as Robert was that close to him. “Now that I’m here, sitting at your bedside, everything is how it should be, Lyanna. I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you from him.”

Nothing was how it should be. She should be dead.

She hadn’t needed protecting. Rhaegar hadn’t trapped her. He’d begged her to bear his child, sure, but in exchange, she’d been promised freedom, and a home to come back to whenever she was tired of adventuring, and a family of her own, free of the obligations and expectations of being the queen. It had been a choice between marrying Robert and being trapped for the rest of her life, and marrying Rhaegar and having everything she’d ever wanted, and now, the choice had been taken away from her. She had her son, and nothing else.

“My son,” she choked out, “J—“

Not Jaehaerys. If she said his name, then Robert would know the truth.

“Jon. Hand me my Jon, please.”

Robert released her ( _ finally— _ ) and stood, moving towards the cradle. She reached inside, removed the infant with more care than she ever would’ve thought he could possess, and brought her son to her bedside. He placed the infant onto her chest, and he was small,  much too small , but he was perfect.

Lyanna wondered if it was Ned who’d persuaded Robert to spare him, or if it was the fact that he looked nothing like his father. If his dark hair and silver eyes, dull like steel, masked his heritage enough that Robert was willing to overlook Rhaegar’s blood. If his obsession with her had finally brought one good thing into her life, if she could keep her son close to her, then she supposed that perhaps it could be enough to keep living for.

“Will he be a Sand,” Robert asked, “or a Waters?”

Lyanna heard the question behind what he was asking. He was born in Dorne, but his father was from the Crownlands, and Robert was certain that the boy was a bastard. She wouldn’t tell him otherwise, because he could never know that Lyanna and Rhaegar were wed by a Septon, that she’d been widowed when her husband was slain at the Trident, because that would make her son heir to the Seven Kingdoms. No matter what mercy Robert was showing him on her and her brother’s behalf, he wouldn’t stand to have the trueborn son of Rhaegar living in his household.

“He will be called Jon Snow,” she croaked instead.

Her son would belong to the North.

“Why have you accepted my son so easily?” Lyanna asked, somewhere between wary and exhausted. There was nothing she wanted more than to close her eyes and sleep again, but she wanted to be certain that Jaehaerys wouldn’t be stolen from her as she took her rest. He hadn’t been taken from her while she recovered, but there was nothing stopping Robert from having him killed later. “He’s Rhaegar’s.”

Something dangerous flashed over Robert’s face, but it was soon replaced with remorse. He wrung his hands together, staring down at the floor like a scolded dog, and Lyanna felt a lump form in her throat. “I’m sorry, Lyanna,” he said anxiously, “I truly am. I’m ashamed of myself, for the stain on your honor, and I—“

“Robert,” Lyanna said warningly, “what are you saying?”

He told her the story of his own baseborn son, born while she was in Dorne. Of how he’d been lonely, and heartbroken from her loss, and taken solace in the arms of a peasant woman who’d died in childbed, as if that would’ve made the loneliness go away. Lyanna could remember  Mya Stone , that first bastard of his from the Vale, and how that’d been when she’d first realized what kind of a husband he would be to her. Bile rose up in her throat, but she pushed it back down.

Gendry Waters, he called him.

“Jon is my bastard,” no he wasn’t, Lyanna told herself, Jaehaerys was legitimate, she’d wedded his father before the Seven, sworn herself to him willingly in front of witnesses, “and Gendry is yours. They will be raised together, and there will be no more bastards in my household.”

“There won’t be,” Robert promised, “not now that I have you, Lyanna.”

It sent a shiver down her spine, that perhaps he mistook for appreciation, because a smile curled at his lips.

She didn’t believe him. But she couldn’t say it, not with Jaehaerys cradled in her arms.

Instead, she caressed her son’s face, looked down at his perfect features. There truly was nothing of his father in his face, besides perhaps the slope of his nose, although it was too early to tell. But she already knew that he would have his father’s thoughtfulness, and his love of learning, would be charming and inquisitive and everything that Lyanna admired about Rhaegar. He’d have his singing voice, but perhaps her brother’s stoic countenance, and she would make sure he grew up knowing that he was loved by those around him.

“Hopefully, he takes after the Starks,” Robert said darkly, “rather than  _ them _ .”

Robert wanted to end the Targaryen line, and in a way, he had. Jaehaerys wouldn’t know his father or his heritage, not as Lyanna knew them. But he was still their blood. If Robert saw cause to kill her son, then she had no doubt that he would. He’d shown his true self when he had Princess Elia’s poor children murdered in cold blood.

“He has my eyes, and my hair,” Lyanna reminded him.

“Dragon’s blood flows through his veins.”

“Stark blood is stronger yet,” she assured him.

That, at least, drew a hearty laugh from him. “Aye, that is true.”

Lyanna admired her son again, Rhaegar’s son, her beloved Jaehaerys. She admired the short, black curls atop his head, his thick eyelashes, the way his fingers curled into his blankets. If taking in another one of Robert’s bastards was what she needed to keep him safe, if Robert viewed it as some sort of _equivalent exchange_ , then she would do it. Not to mention that the child wasn’t to blame for his father’s infidelity.

She didn’t love Robert, but maybe if she forced herself to, it would be better for all of them involved.

“Where’s my brother?” Lyanna asked tiredly.

“At the bedside of Ser Arthur Dayne,” Robert said, shaking his head. Lyanna remembered the Dornish knight of the Kingsguard, remembered him telling her that he would either protect her and her babe, or die trying, and she was so very glad that he had lived. “His sister, Lady Ashara, made him swear to spare his life if she told him where to find you. He kept his promise, as he always does.”

Perhaps that was why she had survived. Because her brother always kept his promises.

“Has he been to visit me?” She asked, hopeful.

“Every morning,” Robert answered, “and every night.”

Oh, Ned.

He’d saved her from death, and doomed her to a worse fate, of being a pretty little thing kept in the gilded cage that was King’s Landing, there for Robert’s amusement and misguided adoration of her. But he’d somehow convinced Robert to spare Jaehaerys, and he’d spared Arthur himself. Neither was he the one to murder Rhaegar and his children. Her brother, always so honorable, had kept his promises, and they’d been rewarded for it.

Jaehaerys would be safe. He wasn’t, but he would be.

“Jon,” Robert said, looking down at the babe, “after my mentor?”

“Yes,” Lyanna lied. It would be a nickname for her son, she promised herself, she could keep calling him by the name his father gave him in her head. Rhaegar had been so certain that Jaehaerys would be a daughter, but she knew he would’ve loved his son regardless. “I thought it fitting.”

“He and Gendry will be close,” Robert jested.

Lyanna didn’t appreciate the joke, but she forced a smile. “I’m sure they will.”

Two boys, born in the final few weeks of the war, named Waters and Snow. She’d ensure they would be raised as brothers.

Jaehaerys yawned, blinking open his beautiful slate eyes, and her smile became genuine. Lyanna stroked his cheek, admiring his soft features, the button nose that she desperately hoped would be his father’s. She quietly thanked her brother again, wherever he was, for saving her son.

“We’ll be wed as we were meant to be in two weeks’ time.”

Dread settled into the pit of Lyanna’s stomach. She’d truly lost everything, her freedom included. “Then everything is over,” she said, rather than crying out in her sorrow, “the rebellion, and the fighting?”

A war that had been built on the lie that she had been taken unwillingly.

“I slew Rhaegar myself at the Trident,” Robert said proudly, seeming to square his shoulders and puff out his chest like some sort of bird, “and drove my hammer into his arrogant face. Ser Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard killed the Mad King himself, after pretending that he was there to provide assistance.”

Lyanna had never liked King Aerys, and Rhaegar had never loved his father. He’d eagerly awaited his death with a fervency that Lyanna could never understand. But Ser Jaime was sworn to the Kingsguard, had made an oath to protect House Targaryen, and she knew that someday he would pay the price for his broken vows in his blood.

“Where are we?” Lyanna asked.

“The Red Keep,” Robert answered, “in King’s Landing.”

“Oh, my dearest Robert,” she said, although it left a bitter taste in her mouth.

“I know, Lyanna,” he promised, “I know.”

He could know nothing, and Jaehaerys would be safe.

“Take Jon,” she asked politely, “and help me stand, please.”

Robert did as she requested, because if nothing else, at least he was devoted to her. It was strange, how he’d always put her on some sort of pedestal, but it benefitted her, sometimes. He laid Jaehaerys in his cradle, then gently held Lyanna’s arm as she carefully lowered her legs from the bed, standing up despite the throbbing soreness between her legs.

“Mae,” Robert called, and a woman hurried inside, “care for the child while I walk with my beloved.”

She despised the pet name when it came from anyone but Rhaegar.

“Yes, my king,” the woman said, bowing respectfully.

Lyanna was loathe to leave her son, but she’d always been restless — she had never wanted to sit and wait for anything. It would be weeks yet until she would be fit to ride again, but she could at least walk, even with Robert practically hanging off her arm. She gazed around the walls of the Red Keep, the fortress that Rhaegar had once promised she would see someday as his companion, rather than simply his wife or his queen, and imagined that it was him holding her steady instead.

“Would you take me to the gardens?” Lyanna asked him, pulling her robes tightly around herself. She felt exposed, dressed in only a sheer gown and a satin robe, but the sensation of her bare feet against the cold marble floors was pleasant. “I’ve always heard they were lovely in the Red Keep.”

Rhaegar had promised her that he would create one in her name, and that he would sing to her and their children between the flowers, and that she would never want for anything. Now, all that she desired was him.

“Certainly,” Robert agreed.

They wandered through the halls of the red Red Keep together, and she could see the places where portraits had been taken down, likely of Targaryens that Robert didn’t want to see the faces of. She hoped that they weren’t destroyed, but she was afraid that they were, alongside their statues. She wasn’t even certain that Robert would maintain the dignity of the royal crypts, or if he would hold those long dead accountable for their descendants’ crimes.

Walking underneath an archway, they came out into one of the loveliest gardens that she’d ever seen, the flowers in full bloom the way that they never had in the North. Robert helped her to sit down on an elegant bench made of woven silver, where butterflies fluttered between chrysanthemums and snapdragons, and overhead, birds were singing.

If it was Rhaegar at her side, rather than Robert, then it would be perfect.

“I’ll plant winter roses here,” Robert promised, “just for you.”  
  


Lyanna began to weep.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna gets married a second time, and has a conversation over breakfast with her young goodbrother.

Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, was spared by Ned Stark. Not long afterwards, Lady Ashara Dayne died in childbirth with Lord Brandon Stark’s bastard son.

The boy, Lewyn Sand, with beautiful purple eyes and a head of raven black hair, would be sent back north with his uncles after the wedding. Lyanna had convinced Robert to spare Arthur the choice between taking the black and execution, assuring him that Arthur had done nothing but protect her during the war, and Robert had agreed on the promise that Ser Arthur would swear his allegiance to her brother and House Stark.

Arthur had wept when she had told him of it, had thanked her endlessly, and apologized for failing to protect her at the tower, but she assured him that he had. That she was happy her brother had found them, that he’d helped to save her son, and that she would be alright without him. That the North would be grateful for his presence, with a long winter fast approaching.

There were three boys with black hair in the nursery, now, and Ned had received a letter saying that there was another waiting for him in Riverrun, his firstborn son, Robb, although the few strands of hair on his head were red rather than brown or black. Four children, three of them considered bastards, all born within the weeks before and after the end of the war. Lewyn and Robb, both cousins, would be raised together, as would Gendry and Jaehaerys.

Robert’s brothers came from Storm’s End for the wedding, both gaunter than she had remembered them. Stannis, about her age and not much younger than Robert, had shadows beneath his eyes and hollowness in his cheeks, and Renly, having not yet reached his sixth name day, was more serious than any child should’ve been, although he’d brightened considerably when she introduced him to his nephews.

Robert told her that he was making the elder Lord of Dragonstone, and the younger would be the next Lord of Storm’s End. She’d encouraged him to reconsider, that Stannis deserved their ancestral home as the second son, but he wasn’t dissuaded.

Jon Arryn, the new Hand of the King, would be hard pressed to provide council to a king that refused to listen to reason.

Lord Mace Tyrell had bent the knee to him, too, and as had Prince Oberyn Martell, both grateful for Robert’s killing of Rhaegar and deeply resentful for his refusal to punish his sister’s murderer. Lord Hoster Tully bent the knee, his eldest daughter having wed into House Stark. Her brother Ned bent the knee to his closest friend, just as Renly, the new Lord Renly, bent the knee to his eldest brother. Lord Tywin Lannister bent the knee to him, and Lyanna wished that Robert she could’ve taken his head while it was bowed.

The Seven Kingdoms were Robert’s, and soon, they would be Lyanna’s, too.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” Ned had mumbled into her hair the night before the wedding.

He hadn’t known before, but he did now.

“ _I have my Jaehaerys,_ ” she’d said, stroking his back to comfort him, “ _and that is enough._ ”

At the wedding, her brother’s cloak was removed from her shoulders, and when it was replaced with Robert’s, it felt as if she’d had a piece of her heart torn away. She was dressed in a beautiful gown, jewels hanging from every inch of her body, but she longed for when she had been wedded to Rhaegar, the ceremony lovely in its simplicity.

She was undressed by her handmaidens on her way to the wedding chambers, and Robert was undressed by his own men, flushed with too much wine from the feast following the wedding. They were tossed onto their marriage bed together, and while Robert was decent, performing better than she’d expected despite his obvious intoxication, she couldn’t help but remember the reverent way that Rhaegar had touched her the night that they’d conceived Jaehaerys.

The soreness from her son’s birth still followed her, and Robert’s clumsy touches did nothing to alleviate it.

A drunken Robert caressed her belly afterwards and told her that she would be pregnant with his heir before the year’s end, and the thought made her feel sick. It should be Jaehaerys who would sit the throne, not Robert’s child, but she could not tell him that. Instead, she remained quiet until he fell asleep, but his deep, rumbling snores made sleep elude her.

“Good morning, my Queen,” Mae greeted her the next day. She’d helped her dress, stumbling into the restrictive skirts and bodices that Robert had insisted she wear, rather than the comfortable leathers she was accustomed to. She’d laced together her shoes, and the fabric around her stomach, and Lyanna felt as if she was putting on a mask. “You look lovely.”

Robert was still in bed, but she didn’t allow it to stop her from leaving their chambers. A pair of guards that’d been standing outside of the doorway quickly fell into place behind her, but at least they were discreet. She walked through the halls, intent on seeing her son, but when she walked inside the nursery, she was surprised by who she found.

Renly was curled up in a chair next to the cradles, a book open in his lap, and he rested his cheek on the arm of the armchair, drool slipping out of his mouth and onto the red fabric. She shut the door behind her, and the guards remained outside as she quietly approached the sleeping child.

Gently placing a hand on his shoulder, he startled, and eyes that she’d first thought were green opened to reveal a blue as deep as Robert’s. “Lyanna,” he stuttered, glancing furtively towards Lewyn, who was sleeping peacefully in his cradle, “I’m sorry, I just, I heard them crying, and Stannis always reads to me whenever I get scared, and—”

How Robert’s brother could be so sweet, Lyanna didn’t know.

“It’s alright,” Lyanna promised him quietly, shifting the boy so she could sit next to him in the chair. Renly went silent, and she cradled him close, looking down at the book. She could read the title herself, but regardless, she asked, “what were you reading to them?”

“Queen Nymeria,” Renly answered, “and her con, _conq—_ ”

“Conquest,” Lyanna helped him.

“Her conquest, of Dorne.”

The children’s book, with a ship sewn into the fabric of the cover, was simply written, but she was impressed regardless in the child’s reading ability. “You’re a smart boy,” she complimented

Renly flushed pink in the face, a smile tugging at his lips. “I don’t like books, but I like it when my brother reads them to me.”

Whatever had happened during the Siege of Storm’s End, he would recover, she was certain. “Do you wish to break your fast with me?”

“Is there enough food for me, too?” Renly asked, although he perked up.

“Yes,” Lyanna answered, her heart breaking a little. When she’d been six, her greatest concern was whether her parents would allow her to watch her brothers sparring in the training yard, or take her to see the executions. “From here on, there will always be enough food.”

“Good,” Renly said, his nose wrinkling in displeasure, “because onions are  gross . But, don’t tell Stannis I told you that.”

“I won’t,” she promised, laughing.

The guards accompanied them to the kitchens, because of course they did, but they didn’t attempt to stop her as she removed the ingredients for a cake and began to mix them, Renly watching her in amazement. Cake for breakfast wasn’t conventional, and Ned would roll his eyes if he knew, but she deserved it after everything she’d been through, and so did the young boy with her.

His eyes widened to the size of moons when she set down a plate of pastries and cakes and fruit in front of him, but despite his obvious interest, he ate slowly and deliberately. “Stannis told me that I would get sick if I ate too fast,” he explained through a mouthful of food when she questioned his hesitance to scarf down his meal, “because I wasn’t eating enough before. He says that I might be short when I’m older, too.”

The one good thing about Rhaegar’s loss, she supposed, was that the child in front of her hadn’t needed to eat corpses. She’d been told of the harrowing siege at the wedding by Stannis, of how they’d had the horses and cats, and even rat, when the supplies got too low. And then, the Onion Knight had arrived.

“Well I think that someday, you’ll be big and strong, like your brothers.”

Renly scrunched up his nose again. “Stannis is always saying that I’ll have a wife when I’m older,” he said in disgust, pouting as he prodded his food, “and that I’ll be a knight, but I don’t think that I want to be big and strong if it means that I need any of  that .”

“Well, now you’ll be a Lord instead,” Lyanna said, “and you won’t have to take a wife for many, many years.”

“Or _ever_ ,” Renly said, faking an exaggerated gag, “unless she’s taller than me, and can be a knight for me, and can win a tournament on her own. I’d want her to make me her King of Love and Beauty.”

Lyanna laughed, hard enough that her shoulders were shaking. The child in front of her was more hilarious than he had any right to be. “You know,” she said, leaning forwards, “I was called the Knight of the Laughing Tree, once, almost two years ago.”

His face brightened like the sun had broken through storm clouds, eyes widening in amazement. He promptly forgot about the food in front of him, leaning across the table as she coyly took another bite of her cake. “Lyanna,” he said gravely, gripping the table, “you were the knight at Harrenhal? The Mad King’s sworn enemy, who beat three knights at the joust before disappearing?”

“Mhm,” she nodded, swallowing. Smearing berry on her fingertip, she reached forwards, and drew a smiling weirwood tree onto the back of the boy’s hand. He stared at the symbol in amazement, leaning back to sit on his heels. “I chased off three squires who were bullying a boy named Howland Reed, and the next day, I beat their masters in combat and made them teach their squires humility as a ransom to get their horses and swords back.”

“And the Mad King,” Renly continued, “he hunted you down!”

Lyanna laughed heartily. “He did, but he couldn’t find me! Because he thought that he was looking for a man, but all that he found was my shield, which I had stuffed into a tree.”

“My goodsister is a knight, then,” Renly said, pleased.

“Not officially,” Lyanna acquiesced, “but if I could be one, then I would.”

“She’s my Queen, now,” a voice said proudly behind them. A shiver ran down her spine, cold and unpleasant, and it felt like there was something caught in her throat. She didn’t know how long Robert had been standing there, but she guessed it was for longer than a few minutes. “No more gallivanting around with swords for her, and hopefully not for me, either!”

“Robert,” Renly said brightly, turning towards his brother. He glanced quickly between Lyanna and Robert, blue eyes sparkling, before settling on watching his elder brother. “Can Lyanna show me how to hold a sword before Stannis and I leave, tomorrow? Please?”

“I’ve said it before that Stannis will not be leaving with you when you return home to Storm’s End,” Renly seemed to deflate at that, shoulders sagging as the smile on his face fell slightly, “and Lyanna cannot properly fight.”

“I can, actually,” Lyanna reminded him, “my brothers showed me how. I’ve beaten you in a spar before.”

Thankfully, Robert laughed at the reminder, rather than growing angry. “That was many years ago, Lyanna.”

“Please, Rob’, can’t she?” Renly pleaded desperately. “Please?”

“My answer is still no.”

There was a moment, however brief, where Lyanna feared that the boy would begin to cry. That he’d throw a tantrum, scream and rage at his brother, and she would be caught between them. Her chest constricted, and it became difficult to breathe as she gripped her fork tightly.

“Women should be knights, too,” Renly grumbled instead, “like in Dorne.”

“Well,” Robert chuckled, “when you’re a Lord, then you can make a woman your knight.”

Lyanna released the breath she was holding.

“Now, my beloved,” he said, tenderly resting a hand on her shoulder that she wanted to push away from herself, “we’re expected to meet with the Lannisters of Casterly Rock to discuss the terms of their surrender more in depth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that Robb would be growing up alone without Jon, and I loved the concept of Ashara Dayne/Brandon Stark, so I gave him a new cousin to be friends with, although I promise that Robb and Jon will meet eventually! ;)


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ned leaves King’s Landing, and Lyanna breaks her fast with Robert.

  
Ned embraced Lyanna tightly, cradling her head close to his chest as she wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed. She would miss the North and Winterfell, of course, but it was him and Benjen that she would miss the most, living in King’s Landing. The loss of Brandon and their father felt like an open wound, but she could mourn for them, and someday, perhaps the scars they left on her heart wouldn’t ache anymore. Conversely, she would miss Ned and Benjen every day she wasn’t with them.

“I’ll tell Benjen that you miss him,” Ned told her warmly, pulling back just far enough to press a gentle kiss against her brow. They needed to separate eventually, but she wished that she could stay holding him forever. As soon as he released her, it would be Robert whose arms she would be trapped in. “Is there something you would like me to tell him?”

“Only that he’s _required_ to come visit me before the year’s end,” Lyanna said, only half-jesting. She hadn’t seen their youngest brother in over a year, not since she ran away with Rhaegar, and she knew that he wouldn’t forgive her if she admitted that she’d left him willingly. “And that I love him, very much.”

“Of course,” Ned said, stepping away.

And with that, her elder brother was gone, and Lord Stark had replaced him. He hadn’t been raised for the position, but it fit him perfectly. She wasn’t certain if it made her want to laugh, or weep, because hardly two years before he’d been just starting to loosen up, dreaming of marrying Ashara Dayne and becoming a prince down south in Dorne. Whatever fantasies he’d allowed himself, they’d died alongside their father and brother.

She wondered if he felt like he was simply wearing Brandon’s skin sometimes, trapped in a role he didn’t want with a wife and son that shouldn’t have been his. An imposter in his own life, constantly having to live up to others’ expectations of him. Lyanna supposed she felt the same way, needing to be worthy of the pedestal that Robert had placed her on, and the title of Queen that he had forced upon her unwillingly.

Ser Arthur stepped forwards, and she offered him her hand freely. He’d spared her brother, and would’ve protected her with his life if he’d had the chance, and she knew that he’d protect their nephew and her brother in her stead back home in the North. Cradling it in his palm and pressing a kiss against it, he stood back up stiffly, clearly favoring his left leg.

“My Queen,” Ser Arthur said, and she could hear the emotion thick in his throat. He had been Rhaegar’s closest friend and confidant, and Lyanna couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been something more than that to him, once, before thoughts of prophecies and sister-wives filled his head. Regardless, he had called her his queen long before Robert had married her. “May you and your son find peace and good health until summer comes again.”

“Thank you, Ser Arthur,” she said warmly, “for everything.”

“It was my pleasure,” Ser Arthur assured her.

Behind them, Robert cleared his throat. Ser Arthur stepped away, and she wished that she could reach out and grab him, and pull him back against her for an overdue embrace, but he was already gone, standing stiffly next to her brother. They’d be returning home together with their nephew, she reminded herself — the two men she trusted the most were _leaving_.

After them, the formalities passed quickly. Jon Arryn assured that he would return to take up his position as Hand of the King once he’d retrieved his wife, Ned’s goodsister, from their home in the Vale of Arryn. When Stannis and Renly said their farewells to both Robert and each other, Renly had the meltdown that’d been threatened days before, only to get smacked upside the head by his Septa. The Lannisters left King’s Landing once again with the favor of the crown, although Lyanna wanted to castrate Lord Tywin with her bare hands and leave his head on a pike above the gate of the keep.

The wheelhouses and men on their horses left, Ned waving a final, reluctant farewell to her, and she was alone. Her babe was in his nursery, her husband standing at her side, and their retainers and servants all around them, but none of them knew what she’d just lost. She was utterly, completely _alone_ , and it was terrifying.

Robert laid a hand on her shoulder, and she stiffened before forcing herself to relax underneath his touch. “Dry your tears,” he said, his smile insensitive. She hadn’t realized she was crying until he pointed it out. “Now, we’re finally free of your brother’s nagging, as much as I’m certain we’ll miss the _honorable Ned Stark_.”

She fought the twisting feeling in her stomach.

“Yes, Robert,” Lyanna agreed passively. It wouldn’t do, she reminded herself, to argue against him. Better to stay quiet, and at least put on the appearance of a good wife. She was seventeen, hardly anything more than a child, and she would use that to her advantage. The Small Council would hardly expect someone like her to have any awareness of the politics of the realm.

“We haven’t broken our fasts, yet,” Robert sighed, turning towards the massive keep behind him. He gripped her wrist with more force than he needed, pulling her towards her new prison. “Ham sounds wonderful this morning, wouldn’t you agree, Lyanna?”

At breakfast, Lyanna picked at her meal while Robert ate with all the grace of a hound, or a pig, sucking on the bones of his meat and licking his fingers with enthusiasm. It was a disgusting performance to watch, his sloppiness hardly befitting the King of the Seven Kingdoms, but nonetheless, she stayed at the table, reminding herself that she could join her son in his nursery soon enough.

With Rhaegar, there’d been passion, and romance, even if she knew she would grow tired of him eventually. Elia had given them permission to wed so that his third child would not be a bastard, and Rhaegar had planned on wedding Elia again as soon as the war was over and their son was born. Now, with Robert, she simply felt uncomfortable, and stifled.

She feared the day that her discomfort would turn into an unbearable suffocation.

“Cersei and Aemon will be wed, soon,” Robert said around his wineglass, tilting it back so he could catch the last of the deep purple liquid. Setting it down on the table, he immediately moved onto serving himself more meat. “My cousin, wedding a _Lannister_ ,” he scoffed, “although it’s the price we paid for peace. She’ll be an Estermont soon enough.”

More like the price paid for their wealth in the royal coffers, Lyanna thought to herself. Rather than punishing the Lannisters for treason, king-slaying, and the murder and rape of innocents, they’d been rewarded with marrying into the royal family.

“Lady Cersei is a lovely girl,” Lyanna said.

A greasy grin worked its way onto Robert’s face, and she bristled. “I would jest about her family’s _assets_ , although I doubt you would find it in good humor.”

Lyanna didn’t know how to respond, and Robert’s smile faded at her silence. It was quiet the rest of the meal, something she was grateful for. She couldn’t stand listening to him speak for long. It’d been that way since they were children, with Robert trying to take the role of the leader, and Lyanna inevitably getting frustrated and yelling at him. Somehow, her rejections and spurning only ever seemed to inflame his desire to marry her.

Perhaps he viewed her as a prize to be won. A symbol of his prowess, and his influence. She knew that she was a lovely woman, and that she always had been, and Robert had a penchant for collecting pretty things until he grew bored of them. With Jaehaerys, however, she couldn’t allow him to grow tired of her, not if she wanted him the safest he could be.

“I’m not feeling well,” Lyanna said, “if I could be excused.”

Robert grunted around another mouthful of breakfast, nodding. She took it as a sign of assent, and stood, making her way towards the staircase that would lead towards their shared bedchambers and the nursery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come see me at @gay-poster-child on Tumblr to give me fanfic requests and tell me cursed facts, and make sure to stay safe!


End file.
